Adam, Eve and Population Genetics: A Reply to Dr. Richard Buggs (Part 1)

Allele frequency spectrums (AFS) do not give a solid view of ancient bottlenecks, but they do of recent population structure. Ironically, very recent bottlenecks are not well ascertained by MSMC and PSMC and LD-Blocks, but they are clear in AFS. This is covered pretty well here:

So yes, in the ancient past you cannot really infer much from AFS, but that has never been @glipsnort’s claim. His claims are consistent with what I showed with argweaver.

  1. @glipsnort has not made any claims of heliocentric certainty.

  2. He would agree that past about 500 kya, we do not expect allele frequency spectrums to detect a bottleneck of a single couple. That is where he places a tentative cutoff. So his results are essentially the same as argweaver, though the evidence form argweaver is much stronger.

  3. His original reason for delving into AFS was to respond to some young earth creationists that claimed the AFS was inconsistent with a large ancient population and required a single couple origin just 6,000 years ago: (Can someone explain like I'm 5 yo, what's wrong with this refutation of Biologos?).

  4. His response to Ola Hossjer (colleague of @agauger) has been very well measured, and entirely correct. (Glipsnort responds to a critical article) Notice that he does not prese a case against ancient bottlenecks, but only for common ancestry with great apes and huamns, and against a recent bottleneck. Both those claims are very well supported by the evidence, and he produces analysis of his own all the time.

I know you are not attacking @glipsnort personally, or even leveling an unfair scientific critique. I do think, however, it is important to clarify that he has been a measured and careful voice. In my opinion, he has not drawn incorrect conclusions from the AFS work, nor has he overstated his certainty of those results.

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